This invention relates to a knitting machine with a first group of parts in the form of knitting elements, such as needles, sinkers, jacks or the like and with a second group of parts in the form of guide elements, such as cam parts, needle bed or sinker bed bars or walls or the like. These parts move in relation to each other in operation and their faces slide on each other. Because of that their faces or surfaces which contact each other are formed at least partially as wear-resistant surfaces to enhance the resistance to abrasion.
Knitting machines which contain parts of the first and second groups provided with low-wear surfaces are already known in various forms (DE-GM 1 647 894, DE-GM 7 147 560, DE-OS 2 118 624, DE-OS 2 251 799). The surfaces can consist in particular of tungsten carbide, metal-ceramic material, chromium oxide, synthetic gems or the like or can be produced simply by the use of adequately hardened materials and are as a rule specially matched to the relevant part of the first or second group.
In these current knitting machines the aim has always and exclusively been to obtain through a high hardness of the contacting surfaces of the parts of the machine a long service life of the parts and hence of the knitting machine as a whole.